Remotely Monitoring Your Parents!
Systems that remotely monitor the movements, weight, blood pressure, compliance with medication schedules and other daily behaviors of older adults are springing up. For children with older parents experiencing failing health such systems mean high-tech eldercare from afar. For the parents it means a chance to age in place.
Take for example, the BeClose system.
Add some smart software into the mix as they do in the QuietCare system and you can infer a lot about what is going on:
“Have they gotten out of bed in the morning?
Have they navigated the bathroom safely?
Have they eaten?
Have they taken their medicine?
What’s their overall activity level?
Are they sleeping well?”
But technology is only part of the story. Successful deployment and use requires close attention to human factors and good cognitive design. A recent article in the New York Times brings this to a sharp point:
“Many of the systems are godsends for families. But, as with any parent-child relationship, all loving intentions can be tempered by issues of control, role-reversal, guilt and a little deception — enough loaded stuff to fill a psychology syllabus. For just as the current population of adults in their 30s and 40s have built a reputation for being a generation of hyper-involved, hovering parents to their own children, they now have the tools to micro-manage their aging mothers and fathers as well.”
The article makes the point that remote monitoring eldercare systems are meeting cognitive needs on both sides of the fence:
In addition to giving him peace of mind that his mother is fine, the system helps assuage that midlife sense of guilt. “I have a large amount of guilt,” Mr. Murdock admitted. “I’m really far away. I’m not helping to take care of her, to mow her lawn, to be a good son.”
The article does a good job of raising some of the key cognitive design issues but it is far from clear how they can be resolved.
